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Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

For absolutely no reason, except maybe to get it out of the way, I’m going to tell you about Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Even though it has my name in the title, I assure you, my revenge would be much better than this movie, and involve a whole lot less man butt. Yeah, that’s right, you heard me. Folks, there’s not an inch of homophobia in my body, but you know what? Gay stuff is funny. Not saying belittling or insulting someone with the word gay is my idea of comedy, but, like any culture you aren’t a part of (I swear!) it’s fun to point out the weird little differences between us and celebrate the fact that Bugs Bunny was an early influence on all our funny bones (teehee).

If you’re feeling lost because you know nothing about this movie, let me get right into it, nice and deep. This is the gayest horror movie ever made, and not on purpose at that! The lead actor was gay, not openly, but the set design crew knew it, and they totally had fun with it, and that, involved with a script that involved a leather-bar-frequenting gym coach and a naked butt shower scene, and boys wanting to spend the night together, and a girlfriend who obviously isn’t getting enough attention who has to save her boyfriend from the man inside of him, piles up to be the greatest unintentionally gay horror film of all time. There’s a dance scene that was supposed to mimic Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but instead, involved glittery gold glasses and a pop gun aimed at the face, that is just naive and boyish enough to be passed over by the more innocent viewer, but demands snickers and wide eyes from those of us wondering how the hell this all got through the editing table without someone going “woah woah woah… what?!” Did I mention the “no girls allowed” sign on his bedroom door?

“Ok, so, it’s got a bunch of unintentional gay stuff throughout, but tell me about the good parts of the movie?” I just did. As a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, this film is dead last in the ranking. They totally screw up the mythos and treat it like a haunted house deal and there’s a part where Freddy goes into the real world intentionally, which he would never do, because he’s just a dude then, with no special powers. They act like that’s not the case, and they have him cut off his fingers to freak people out, which just – doesn’t – make – any – sense. He’s surrounded by a bunch of physically fit teenage boys who could tackle him and rip him apart, and Freddy really doesn’t seem threatening as a five foot something dude jumping around like a court jester. And this is all achieved because he possessed the boy who lives in the house where Nancy lived in the last film, and he’s only doing this so people believe in him again so he can kill people in their dreams. To have him ripping out of the kids body, while being a very VERY cool scene and effect that makes you feel like you’re watching a good movie, is also completely against the entire concept of the Freddy character.

Excuses have been made by the director, from “I just didn’t think a guy in your dreams was scary” to “the mythos hadn’t existed yet, so you can’t blame us for not following the rules that hadn’t been made yet!” But I’m not buying it. Telling me you aren’t scared of something in your dreams because they can’t hurt you is telling me you didn’t even see the first movie. HE CAN HURT YOU, THAT’S THE CATCH! THAT’S WHY IT’S SCARY. Dunno why that concept is beyond certain people, but they’re dumb. And sure, the mythos of the son of a 100 maniacs had not yet been fully developed, but to stray this far away from the original idea was not necessary in order to create an original story that wasn’t derivative of the original.

Stray Cats and Frank Zappa posters in the background!!!

Most fans of the series skip over this film, or at just view it as the comical mis-step similar to Friday the 13th Part V (the one that has no Jason), and was followed by what some fans see as the best film in the series, Part 3: The Dream Warriors, which saw the return of Wes Craven in the writer’s chair (no directing, just writing) along with characters from the first film, as well as new characters that traveled into the next film, but that’s another film far more deserving of a review than this one. So stick around, and you might learn sumtin’.